Summary
Between approx. the 9th and 12th cent. liturgical chants with transliterated Greek text occur in Western manuscripts in a variety of regions (e.g. France, Italy, England and the German-speaking countries). Most famous are the ordinary-chants (Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei) of the so-called “Missa Graeca”, but also 49 various others such as Alleluia-chants, antiphones for Christmas, Easter and Pentecost or the Cherubic hymn can be found in these manuscripts.
Although these chants are regarded as a paradigm for interculturality between Byzantium and the West in the middle-ages, many questions still remain unsolved. The paper will therefore concentrate on the following central issues with regard to the transmission of liturgical chants:
• How can these chants have come to the West and/or who might have set Greek texts to music using perhaps a Byzantine model?
• To which extent could a cultural transfer have happened between Byzantium and the West in medieval times and in which way might Eastern and Western liturgical music have indeed influenced each other?
• What can the West have prompted to actually include chants with Greek texts in the manuscripts?
• How was the usage of Greek in liturgical chants regarded in contemporary sources? Were Greek-texted chants seen as something “foreign/exotic” or belonging to oneʼs own cultural heritage?
• Did the Greek chants have a purely decorative function or were they meant to stress the universality of the church?
The paper will offer a reevaluation of the sources, a new assessment of the myths and facts surrounding the chants in questions as well as a discussion of new results from the current research project on the “Cultural transfer of music between Byzantium and the West”.
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